VI. Stability and Decline, 1965-1980

A. Phil Wood, Plant Manager

Phillip C. Wood came to Acklin in 1942 from The University of Toledo's engineering school. During the war production effort Phil had worked as a metalurgist on the shell line. From there he moved to the estimating department, then standards, before entering the engineering department. During the early 1950s Phil served as a production engineer, before being promoted to Chief Engineer. By 1955 Phil Wood had moved up to the position of Plant Manager, overseeing the efficient operation of the plant's production effort on a day to day basis.

In1965, the year Phil was appointed to the Plant Manager position, Acklin Stamping hit a brief period of slowdown. During the early months of the year a steel strike seemed to loom off the horizon, as a precaution Acklin overstocked its supply of steel and when the strike didn't occur Acklin was left with a large amount of expensive steel. This combined with a cool summer and a slowing demand for refrigerators caused layoffs in the late summer and early fall of 1965.

Production began to climb slowly through 1966 and 1967, a strike at Tecumseh Products in 1968 slowed work down for a few months but by 1969 production was again at full tilt. The first large surge in production from the late 1940s through the late 1950s was connected to the rapid expansion of the refigerator market, however by the mid 1960s this market had begun to shrink. The late 1960s saw however a period of growth in the air conditioning market as more and more Americans purchased units for their cars, homes and businesses. As a result, 1968 and 1969 were extremely busy years with Acklin producing between 30,000 and 40,000 compressor casings daily for sales of 19 million dollars each year.